We had a conversation with an intern from Cornell in Facebook's campus recruiting. In our brief interaction, I appreciate something about him because he's a very self-aware person. Like many fresh graduates who have just started working, he is very curious about what kind of ability a designer needs to make excellent designs.
Being a senior designer requires a well-rounded expertise and a sense of self-diagnosis — key to good design, especially at Facebook.
He shared his design work, let's take a look, this is the work he just started to formally contact with design.
Jon Lee's concept for the Nearspace appAt Facebook, we often refer to visual design as a combination of execution and art. In order to evaluate Jon's current design level and encourage him to work towards the direction of a senior designer, I need to ask him some questions before evaluating his work, so as to better understand his design intentions.
What style and type are you?
Have you thought about your design style? In this piece of yours, I see two font types (title and content), at least three different types of sizes, two color types, centered and left-aligned types.
What is the style of the title? What is the style of the button? And what is the style of the content module?
What style are you using?
I see text buttons in two sizes, buttons in two heights, two strokes and three colors, and buttons with icons.
I see two different list designs, one of which is similar to the existing card design, with elements such as business name, category and star rating, and the list style of recent posts on the profile, which looks a bit like Wireframe.
What's the difference between a button and a list? The personal information page, card, button and list all use the same white stroke background and gray background, should they be distinguished directly?
Which is better, your design style or the existing design specification?
If options can be toggled, can they be toggled automatically? Are cancel and apply buttons necessary? Is clicking cancel the same as clicking back? Can the cancel in the upper right corner be replaced by an x? I see that there is a reset button that doesn't do any filtering, is this button still necessary? Can the apply button replace the reset button?
From a user experience point of view, is this bottom navigation necessary? Are controls on the same vertical line parallel? Are they all necessary?
margin specification
Different spacing is used between the content modules of the nearby pages and the personal homepage, and the outer margin of the filter control is more obvious. What is the principle of these margins?
The left and right margins of the title text of the nearby page module are very small, almost close to the edge of the page, why not use a grid layout?
Is the icon clear?
The seat icons are differentiated by single, three and six, is this a count of one seat or some approximation of the number of seats? Or is it a series of seats? Is there a better way to express it? Is this what you mean by "group buying" offer? Is there another way to design it?
Why is there no obvious sign indicating two opposite meanings? Why would you show such an insignificant element if it's not an important one? Shouldn't the preliminary results contain all available options?
Does pie here mean to express pie? Or is it referring to dessert? Or does it refer to all food? What does drink mean? Are you assuming that every restaurant can serve drinks? Is there a better grouping?
Is your chosen design style consistent?
I see that some filter button options are styled a little differently when using the dropdown filter. Some buttons contain icons and some have only text.
One icon has angles, the other doesn't. The line of the WiFi icon is the thickest, but the icon line of the power strip is very thin. Some are pixelated, some are not. Some are black and some are gray.
Most cards and buttons use the same styles: rounded corners, strokes, color fills, and styles. Are they too consistent? After all, they are two different content modules.
Are all elements on the screen necessary?
There is a divider above the search field, and a divider below each selectable option. I also saw one of the buttons in green. Navigation uses icons plus text, do they really need to exist at the same time?
How do you define your color scheme?
Your color scheme is relatively simple and warm, except for a highlighted green button. What are your design principles? And where is it applied?
Are your spelling, grammar and punctuation correct? Does your content have logic?
Nearby and profile navigations come up a lot, but what does this addition mean? What to add? The word "usability" is misspelled, and does it really need to be here?
How is the "view volume" of a page calculated? Your page title is the filter, but your header shows the distance. Additionally this page can be filtered for number of seats, Wifi availability, available space and food and drink. But can you explain to your friends what the function of this page is? Is the structure of this page reasonable? Are their names reasonable?
Is the page design highly portable?
Would you make the same design decisions if you were designing for an Android or PC platform? What is the difference in decision making between the two?
So back to our original question, how to get better results in product design?
Being able to answer the above questions is just the beginning of a good design work. To be a good designer, a great product designer, requires perseverance. This means that you are already thinking and solving problems as a designer, rather than waiting for someone else to discover the problem before it is too late.
The next job is to answer these questions in a targeted manner, ensuring that your design intent is based on solid design principles, research, and attention to detail. However, the question of design style and preference will be trickier, because not every Every designer has these awareness or good reason. This is normal, because on the road of improving your design ability, the first thing to do is to accept that your design works are not perfect.
Ira Glass has a fantastic take on this:
"No one would complain about a rookie to others. Even if someone sees that I am a rookie, I hope he will not laugh at me. After all, everyone is in design. We are in this business because we have good taste. But every design Every designer will have a bottleneck period. Do you think the design in the first few years is very ordinary now? It is indeed ordinary. But you are working hard to move forward, and you are confident that you can do better, although your works are really good. It's not that good. Your taste, your gear as a designer, and your aesthetic, they're the little bits of disappointment that slip through your mind when you see what you've created, and I know you know what I mean .”
1. If you have taste, then it will tell you how much you can improve and how you should improve your design.
2. Look at other people's excellent design works and then form your own opinions, what is good and what is not, and strengthen the basic design principles based on your opinions.
3. Look at existing design specifications, such as Material Design and Human-Machine Interface Guidelines.
4. Practice more! Practice more! Practice more! Say important things three times.
5. Browse the design community more, download more excellent APPs, go to Dribbble to see excellent design works, don’t copy them, but think about why they do it? Then try to figure out the answer behind it.
6. Show your work to those who have design insights, and listen to their comments on your work, then think about what they said, and then apply it to your design.
7. Constant self-reflection, such as the questions we just mentioned.
8. Now I can give Jon some suggestions, such as your "design style is not uniform" and "the green button is too abrupt". I also gave him some solutions like "Left align the buttons of all filter categories", "Reduce the corner radius of the buttons", "Choose a bright tone for your brand color", if you want to make your work better , It is necessary to constantly polish and carve carefully.
9. Others' feedback and guidance on your work can play a certain role, but the fastest way to improve is to practice more and practice to gain true knowledge, rather than blindly copying the norms.
10. Only by practicing can you make progress. Keep trying hard and develop strong execution ability, which is what beginners need first. Once the role of designer is formed in your mind, it will guide you to progress step by step.